Diana Leeson Fisher grew up in the small town of Kemptville, about an hour south of Canada's Capital. Although surrounded by farms all her life, she really knows nothing about farming. Every day is a new experience for this Accidental Farmwife, as the animals teach her everything she needs to know about life on the farm.

About Me

Friday, July 4, 2014

“Well that’s something you don’t see every day.” The Farmer
was standing at the kitchen sink, looking out the window at the pasture.

I craned my neck to see what he was looking at. Misty the
big Belgian horse was lying on her side, her back to us. Just then her tail
flipped up and something moved under it.

“Ohmigod she’s giving birth!” I yelped.

“No….go get the binoculars.” And a moment later, “that’s
just Donkey.”

“Wha?” I took the binoculars from him to confirm the
sighting. Yep. Donkey was lying in mirror image to Misty, right in front of
her. Basically they appeared, from our vantage point, to be spooning.

“She gave birth to a Donkey,” my husband smiled, patting me
on the shoulder.

Just then my horse rolled around on her back for a minute,
her favourite back-scratching technique, huge dinner-plate hooves in the air, bicycling
and stretching. Then she got up, shook her mane out and proceeded to graze.
Donkey followed suit, a scruffy gray copycat.

Sigh. We have bred Misty twice now, with zero success. We
won’t try again. She came back from her two-week conjugal visit the last time a
little more world-weary, and looking a bit sad and confused. The next time she
leaves the farm for any reason, it will be for training. I would still like to
be able to ride her through our forest trails and meadows.

I remained at the window. “Where’s my sheep?”

Since we sold the rest of the herd early spring, Gracie my
tame ewe has been going through various stages of adjustment. First she did a
bit of crying and looking for the rest of her herd. Sheep hate to be alone. I
kept her in a pen for a while to ensure she wouldn’t go running off into the
field, a fat, fluffy snack for a coyote.

She was a bit thin after her last birthing so I left her on
the lawn in front of the house to take advantage of the fresh new greens we had
growing. Unattended, she decided to follow the Farmer’s truck down the road. It
was, after all, the very truck that she witnessed carrying the rest of her herd
away. As he gathered speed and lost her at the bend, she veered right and
wandered into the woods. Now, sheep don’t like to go into the forest, but
Gracie probably saw the cows, Misty and Donkey and decided she needed to find a
quick way back into the barnyard. Unable to breach the fence, she headed into
the bush. I was notified by the neighbours and had to spend my morning
retrieving her. No easy task, rolling a fat, stubborn sheep under a wire fence.

Next, Gracie got a long, sharp piece of grass wedged between
her teeth. This caused her considerable discomfort, along with the parasites
that caught her before we could give her the monthly shot that keeps her clean
and healthy. The tooth abscessed and she was left with an open wound on her
cheek. I had to woo her with sweet feed and tackle her every day so I could
treat the wound and the Farmer could inject her with penicillin. She regained
her strength and became smart to my daily ritual. Soon she was much better at
getting the sweet feed from me than I was at getting medicine into her. I
worried that having one lonely, mischievous sheep might indeed be too much
trouble for one farmwife.

Then, like a miracle, Gracie decided to team up with Donkey
and Misty. Instead of standing in the barnyard, looking longingly at the
pasture and pining for the herd, the fat little sheep now follows that horse
and donkey everywhere. If there is a threat of any kind, she just stands behind
Misty.

Which is where she was at the exact moment that I was
peering out the kitchen window.

“See that rock? It’s your sheep.”

The rock suddenly lifted its head and became a sheep again.
She had been mimicking the exact movements of the horse and donkey, her trusted
friends.

She got up and shook out her fleece, as if to say, “are we
going now? Ok, I’m ready. Let’s go.”